


without changing a part of me.

by katarama



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Closeted Character, Family Dynamics, Food, Gen, Genderfluid Character, Homophobia, Thanksgiving, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-05 21:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12802668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: Mama and Coach offered to get Bitty plane tickets home a month and a half ago, and Bitty had stalled and waffled until they had to pin him down on a no.It’s all just words to Bitty.(Complicated family Thanksgiving feels from a Southern gay boy living his best life in the heathen North)





	without changing a part of me.

“Hey Bits, you heading home tomorrow?” Dex asks from the kitchen table, staring at his laptop screen.  It’s Tuesday at 11:30 PM, and Dex’s bags are packed and shoved into a corner of the living room.  Dex catches his train at 5:15 AM from South Station, and he isn’t planning on heading back to his dorm room to sleep before then.  

Bitty has a stock answer for this question.  He’s reeled it out dozens of times in the last two weeks with a bright smile plastered on his face to counterbalance the pitying looks ‘ _It’s a little far to fly home for four days_ ’ or ‘ _no, but I’ll be doing dinner with Jack and Ransom_ ’ or ‘ _no, but prepare to have lots of leftover pie when y’all come back!_ ’

He knows how to gloss over the questions that arise.  He certainly doesn’t want to answer them.  Chowder is going all the way home to California.  Farmer is, too.  Mama and Coach offered to get Bitty plane tickets home a month and a half ago, and Bitty had stalled and waffled until they had to pin him down on a no.

‘ _I’m sorry, Mama.  I’ll miss you and Coach and Moomaw and Aunt Judy so much.  Yes, of course I’ll Skype you when you say grace.  The new pecan pie recipe on the Pinterest looks good, Mama.  I wish I could try it out with y’all, too.  I just have too much work.  Finals are coming soon, you know…_ ’

It’s all just words to Bitty.

The Haus has been clearing out all day, though.  Shitty caught the train home that morning, and Nursey’s parents offered Holster a ride up to NYC with them that afternoon.  Even with hockey boy appetites, there won’t be enough people left in the Haus to do a proper Thanksgiving dinner, with the giant turkey and a kitchen counter full of sides and two fridge shelves of pie.  Bitty doesn’t even think they have enough pots and pans for that, anyway.

And on top of that, Bitty has been replying to frantic texts from his Mama all day about missing the extra pair of hands and about recipe tweaks they’ve made in recent years.  

All these empty words are catching up to him.

“No,” Bitty says, his mouth hovering over the word, tasting it.  “I don’t.  Want to.”

Dex’s hands pause on the keyboard.  Bitty’s aware in the clenching of his gut that there are probably people he should be telling this to instead.  Bitty’s heard Shitty rant enough about Thanksgiving dinners with Mr. Knight to know that the topic of conversation would be welcome.  Dex struggles with conversations like this unless his hands are busy, with tools or with pie crust or with a hockey stick.

“Why not?” Dex asks, his eyebrows furrowed.  “I thought you and your Ma are best friends.  Isn’t Thanksgiving, like.  Your holiday?”

On paper, Dex isn’t wrong.  A year ago, Bitty would have even agreed.  A year ago, Bitty was excited to go home, to see his family and to have access to his full kitchen and to be back in the land of warm weather and familiar accents.  

A year ago, Bitty wasn’t out.  A year ago, Bitty wasn’t living as an out gay man.  A year ago, Bitty grimaced and bore the sideways remarks that Aunt Judy made about that Northern school of his, about how  _she’d read about it, you see_ , and  _it was full of queers, you know.  Not that Dicky was one of those, of course.  Playing on the hockey team and all.  Were they allowed to fight in college hockey, too?  It wouldn’t hurt to get a little hair on that chin of his._

A year ago, Bitty didn’t have an undercut for his relatives’ eyes to linger on and whisper about.  Another reminder of how all those Northern Liberals were changing him.  A year ago, Bitty was used to the whispers.  Not immune to them, but accepting of them, because it was just another part of being Different back home in Georgia.

Bitty loves his family.  He loves his Mama.  He loves Coach.  He loves spending time with them.  He unironically loves huddling around the couch at home and watching football on TV.  He loves the frantic last-minute Thanksgiving shopping trip with his Mama to get the same ingredients his Mama forgets every single year.  He loves the way that working in the kitchen with his family feels natural.  He loves the way that everything is bustle and laughter, the way everything flows fluid and familiar and

For the first time in his life, he feels like he no longer fits.

“I do love them,” Bitty says, because those aren’t just words, and never will be.  “I do love Mama.  I love Thanksgiving, too, y’all know that.  It’s just… different now.  I just…”   _Have outgrown the person I used to be, and don’t know if any of them will love me for who I am now, or will even notice the difference enough to respect it_.

“Have changed,” Dex finishes.  Bitty looks up at him.  At his giant Samwell Republican sticker on his laptop that is fraying and curled at the edges, that Dex eagerly placed there during the first week of school and hasn’t removed, even though he hasn’t been to a meeting in two months.  At the brand new, carefully placed trans flag sticker that Bitty knows has been waiting in Dex’s desk drawer for weeks now, but is a more recent addition to his laptop cover.  

Bitty should have given Dex more credit in the first place.

“Yeah,” Bitty says, grateful.  “I’ve changed.  And they haven’t.  And I’m still not sure that’s a good thing.”

“It is,” Dex says, with more certainty and conviction than Bitty expected.  “It has to be.  I have to believe it is.  I have to believe that becoming more yourself isn’t bad.  Cousins and uncles can suck either way just because you changed, and the only way you survive it is to be sure that you aren’t wrong.”  Dex’s fingers curl around the edge of his laptop, finding the brand new sticker.  “I’m gonna get so much shit for knowing about pie now.”

The tension in Bitty’s chest eases, and he laughs.  He isn’t going to prod Dex, because Dex is paying him the same courtesy.  But he does feel better, having a different way to think about it.  He still feels tired from the constant questioning and second-guessing, the constant wondering whether he should’ve just been honest with his Mama in the first place, the constant picking at the question of whether his Mama would still want him home if he were honest.

But this year, this holiday, he made his choice.  He decided to stay with his boys, to stay in a place where he doesn't have to wonder whether he would be accepted for himself at all.

Jack and Ransom aren’t going to force him to be anything he’s not, and he’s grateful for that.  

“Maybe next year you can help me make pie for the Haus,” Bitty offers, and Dex gives him a small smile in return.

“Maybe next year, neither of us will have to hide shit.”

Bitty thinks that that’s maybe being a bit too optimistic.  But if even Dex can find it in himself to hope, then maybe Bitty can too.

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](https://polyamorousparson.tumblr.com).


End file.
